Adonis Ahmos ZuBolton
“Does Faulkner’s Absalom,
Absalom after its protracted
search for telling African blood,
leave us with a image of snow
and the eradication of race?
Not quite.”—Toni Morrison,
Playing in the Dark: Whiteness
and the Literary Imagination
Adonis Snopes—young black Adonis freshman—editor on the Delta—one of the first African-American students on campus—totally alive and wired—inheritor of the blood of African kings—while I was cold aloof as “The Snows of Kilimanjaro”—blinded by prejudice Hemingway butch—blinded by impenetrable inarticulate whiteness—worse than Henry Sutpen at Ole Miss—Allen Hall and American Lit in the middle of Whiteyville—my English classes and all that “othering” mindset—Adonis Snopes freshman outsider—black kid in a Whiteyville deep south university—English Department all white and no blacks—surrounded by estranging whitey Literature—whitey poetry in the library stacks—fetishizing seething sixties Academe—he was a Black Adonis English major—there in the heart of the Whiteyville USA—no Langston Hughes, Richard Bruce Nugent, Countee Cullen, Zora Neal Hurston—no Ralph Ellison, James Baldwin, Amiri Baraka, Ishmael Reed, Charles Johnson, Maya Angelou, August Wilson, Richard Wright, Wanda Coleman—young Adonis Snopes knocking on my dormitory door—that night both of us arriving at an understanding—about Harlem Renaissance and a few other things…
Absalom after its protracted
search for telling African blood,
leave us with a image of snow
and the eradication of race?
Not quite.”—Toni Morrison,
Playing in the Dark: Whiteness
and the Literary Imagination
Adonis Snopes—young black Adonis freshman—editor on the Delta—one of the first African-American students on campus—totally alive and wired—inheritor of the blood of African kings—while I was cold aloof as “The Snows of Kilimanjaro”—blinded by prejudice Hemingway butch—blinded by impenetrable inarticulate whiteness—worse than Henry Sutpen at Ole Miss—Allen Hall and American Lit in the middle of Whiteyville—my English classes and all that “othering” mindset—Adonis Snopes freshman outsider—black kid in a Whiteyville deep south university—English Department all white and no blacks—surrounded by estranging whitey Literature—whitey poetry in the library stacks—fetishizing seething sixties Academe—he was a Black Adonis English major—there in the heart of the Whiteyville USA—no Langston Hughes, Richard Bruce Nugent, Countee Cullen, Zora Neal Hurston—no Ralph Ellison, James Baldwin, Amiri Baraka, Ishmael Reed, Charles Johnson, Maya Angelou, August Wilson, Richard Wright, Wanda Coleman—young Adonis Snopes knocking on my dormitory door—that night both of us arriving at an understanding—about Harlem Renaissance and a few other things…
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